A heuristic solution for fuzzy mixed-model line balancing problem

This paper addresses the mixed-model line balancing problem with fuzzy processing time. A fuzzy binary linear programming model is formulated for the problem. This fuzzy model is then transformed to a mixed zero-one program. Due to the complexity nature in handling fuzzy computation, new approximated fuzzy arithmetic operation is presented. A fuzzy heuristic is developed to solve this problem based on the aggregating fuzzy numbers and combined precedence constraints. The general idea of our approach is to arrange the jobs in a sequence by a varying-section exchange procedure. Then jobs are allocated into workstations based on these aggregated fuzzy times with the considerations of technological constraint and cycle time limit. Promising results are obtained by experiments. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.